In February 2010 Tom Jiunta and a small group of residents in northeastern Pennsylvania formed the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition (GDAC), an environmental organization opposed to hydraulic fracturing in the region. The group sought to appeal to the widest possible audience, and was careful about striking a moderate tone. All members were asked to sign a code of conduct in which they pledged to carry themselves with “professionalism, dignity, and kindness” as they worked to protect the environment and their communities. GDAC’s founders acknowledged that gas drilling had become a divisive issue misrepresented by individuals on both sides and agreed to “seek out the truth.”

The group of about 10 professionals – engineers, nurses, and teachers – began meeting in the basement of a member’s home. As their numbers grew, they moved to a local church. In an effort to raise public awareness about the risks of hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) they attended township meetings, zoning and ordinance hearings, and gas-drilling forums. They invited speakers from other states affected by gas drilling to talk with Pennsylvania residents. They held house-party style screenings of documentary films.

Since the group had never engaged in any kind of illegal activity or particularly radical forms of protest, it came as a shock when GDAC members learned that their organization had been featured in intelligence bulletins compiled by a private security firm, The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR). Equally shocking was the revelation that the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security had distributed those bulletins to local police chiefs, state, federal, and private intelligence agencies, and the security directors of the natural gas companies, as well as industry groups and PR firms. News of the surveillance broke in September 2010 when the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, James Powers, mistakenly sent an email to an anti-drilling activist he believed was sympathetic to the industry, warning her not to post the bulletins online. The activist was Virginia Cody, a retired Air Force officer. In his email to Cody, Powers wrote: “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies.”

The tri-weekly bulletins featured a wide range of supposed threats to the state’s infrastructure. It included warnings about Al-Qaeda affiliated groups, pro-life activists, and Tea Party protesters. The bulletins also included information about when and where groups like GDAC would be meeting, upcoming protests, and anti-fracking activists’ internal strategy. The raw data was followed by a threat assessment – low, moderate, severe, or critical – and a brief analysis.

For example, bulletin no. 118, dated July 30, 2010 gave a low to moderate threat rating in reference to public meetings that anti-drilling activists planned to attend, and suggested that an “attack is likely… and might well be executed.” The threat assessment was accompanied by this note: “The escalating conflict over natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania may define local fault lines and potentially increase area environmentalist activity or eco-terrorism. GDAC communications have cited Northeastern Pennsylvania counties, specifically Wyoming, Lackawanna and Luzerne, as being in real ‘need of our help’ and as facing a ‘drastic situation.’” Another bulletin referenced an August 2010 FBI assessment of the growing threat of environmental activism to the energy industry. Because of Pennsylvania’s importance in the production of natural gas, ITRR concluded, an uptick in vandalism, criminal activity, and extremism was likely.

Although the Pennsylvania scandal caused a brief public outcry, it was quickly brushed aside as an unfortunate mistake. In fact, the episode represents a larger pattern of corporate and police spying on environmental activists fueled in part by the expansion of private intelligence gathering since 9/11.

By 2007, 70 percent of the US intelligence budget – or about $38 billion annually – was spent on private contractors. Much of this largesse has been directed toward overseas operations. But it is likely that some of that money has been paid to private contractors – hired either by corporations or law enforcement agencies – that are also in the business of spying on American citizens. As early as 2004, in a report titled “The Surveillance Industrial Complex,” the American Civil Liberties Union warned that the “US security establishment is making a systematic effort to extend its surveillance capacity by pressing the private sector into service to report on the activities of Americans.” At the same time, corporations are boosting their own security operations. Today, overall annual spending on corporate security and intelligence is roughly $100 billion, double what it was a decade ago, according to Brian Ruttenbur, a defense analyst with CRT Capital.

The surveillance of even moderate groups like GDAC comes at a pivotal time for the environmental movement. As greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, opposition to the fossil fuel industry has taken on a more urgent and confrontational tone. Some anti-fracking activists have engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience and the protests against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline have involved arrests at the White House. Environmentalists and civil libertarians worry that accusations of terrorism, even if completely unfounded, could undermine peaceful political protest. The mere possibility of surveillance could handicap environmental groups’ ability to achieve their political goals. “You are painting the political opposition as supporters of terrorism to discredit them and cripple their ability to remain politically viable,” says Mike German, an FBI special agent for 16 years who now works with the ACLU.

The Pennsylvania episode is not an isolated case. The FBI and Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a Koch Brothers-backed lobbying group, have both taken an interest in anti-drilling activists in Texas. In the fall of 2011, according to an investigation by The Washington Post, the FBI was digging for information on the leader of Rising Tide North America, a direct action environmental group, because of his opposition to hydraulic fracturing (Rising Tide has also been active in organizing protests against the Keystone XL pipeline). Ben Kessler, a Texas-based activist, told the Post that the FBI had received an anonymous tip to look into his activities. The agency also showed up at the office of Kessler’s philosophy professor, Adam Briggle, who teaches an ethics course that covers nonviolent civil disobedience and the history of the environmental movement. Briggle, who has been involved in organizing residents to impose tougher regulations on gas drilling in Denton, Texas, told the Post that, “it seemed like a total fishing expedition to me.”

About a month after he was approached by the FBI, Briggle received a notice from his employer, the University of North Texas, asking him to turn over all emails and other written correspondence “pursuant to City of Denton natural gas drilling ordinances and the ‘Denton Stakeholder Drilling Advisory Group,’” an organization Briggle founded in July 2011 whose mission is similar to that of GDAC. The university had received a request under the state’s Public Information Act and Briggle was forced to hand over more than 1,300 emails. He was later told that the request had been made by Peggy Venable, Texas Director of Americans for Prosperity.

Rising Tide activists had speculated that the anonymous tip came from one of the gas companies active in the region. Although there was no way to prove a connection between the FBI’s investigation and AFP’s mining of Briggle’s emails, both were viewed within the activist community as acts of intimidation. Briggle says, “The message is, you’re being watched.”

During the last decade the FBI and, to a lesser extent, corporations have elevated the threat of eco-terrorism to a top priority even as environmentally motivated crimes have declined. In 2005, John Lewis, an FBI deputy assistant director, said the animal rights and environmental movements were “one of the FBI’s highest domestic terrorism priorities.” In the post-9/11 era, the outsourcing of intelligence gathering to private companies has ballooned, the bar for investigating domestic threats has been lowered, and a premium has been placed on information sharing with the private sector. “What changed after 9/11,” the ACLU’s German says, “was the lowering of the threshold for FBI investigations and the promulgation of these radicalization theories that while specifically written about Muslim extremists – the same theory that people move from ideas to activism to terrorism – justified increased surveillance against activists and against people who were just part of the environmental rights movement but had no association with violence or criminal acts.”

Since 9/11 accusations of eco-terrorism have proliferated and a number of individuals and groups have been prosecuted under new laws, which have profoundly impacted the radical environmental movement. The broad crackdown and subsequent fear and paranoia that swept through activist circles have been referred to as the “Green Scare.” “The shift was gradual,” Will Potter writes inGreen is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege, “slowly merging the rhetoric of industry groups with that of politicians and law enforcement.”

In public, corporations have amplified the threat of eco-terrorism to influence legislation, such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. In private, meanwhile, they have hired firms to spy on environmental groups. About a month after 9/11, for example, the crisis communications firm Nichols Dezenhall (now Dezenhall Resources) registered a website called StopEcoViolence.com (now defunct), which served as a sort of faux watchdog group and source for media outlets including The New York Times. Around the same time, Dezenhall – described by Bill Moyers as the “Mafia of industry” – was involved in corporate espionage. Along with two other PR companies, Dezenhall hired a now-defunct private security firm, Beckett Brown International, to spy on environmental activists. One of the targeted groups was Greenpeace. In 2011 Greenpeace filed a lawsuit charging that Dow Chemical, Sasol (formerly CONDEA Vista), the PR firms, and individuals working for Beckett Brown International (which was founded by former Secret Service officers) stole thousands of documents, intercepted phone call records, trespassed, and conducted unlawful surveillance. In a story for Mother Jones, James Ridgeway revealed that the security firm obtained donor lists, detailed financial statements, Social Security numbers of staff members, and strategy memos from several groups, and, in turn, “produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies.” (In February a Washington, DC court ruled that the claims of trespass and misappropriation of trade secrets could proceed.)

More recently, according to a report in The Nation, the agricultural giant Monsanto contracted with a subsidiary of Blackwater, the private security firm, to gather intelligence on and possibly infiltrate environmental groups in order to protect the company’s brand name. “This is the new normal,” says Scott Crow, an author and longtime environmental activist who was the subject of FBI and corporate surveillance for close to eight years beginning in 1999.

While the above cases involved corporations hiring private security firms to carry out black-ops against environmental groups, the Pennsylvania scandal may be the first time that a state agency has contracted with a private security firm to gather intelligence on lawful groups for the benefit of a specific industry. Although the ITRR bulletins were produced for the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, they were shared with PR firms, the major Marcellus Shale companies, and industry associations. For members of GDAC and other anti-drilling organizations, the revelations were profoundly troubling. Not only were they being lumped together with groups like Al-Qaeda, but the government agencies tasked with protecting the people of Pennsylvania were, in their view, essentially working for the gas companies. If a moderate group like GDAC wasn’t safe from the surveillance-industrial complex, it seemed nobody was. “These systems and this type of collection is so rife with inappropriate speculation and error – both intentional and unintentional – that your good behavior doesn’t protect you,” German says.

Tom Jiunta, the founder of GDAC, says the ITRR bulletins had a chilling effect. Attendance at GDAC meetings declined and some members left the group altogether. Organizers assumed that their phones had been tapped and that their emails were being monitored, a common perception among anti-drilling activists. At meetings they would leave their cell phones outside or remove the batteries. Jiunta, who has a podiatry practice in downtown Kingston, began to take different routes to work because he was worried about being followed. “We kind of assume that we’re being watched,” he says. “Even now.”

Indeed, the intelligence gathering continues. Although the state canceled its contract with ITRR, the company still works for the natural gas industry, according to GDAC attorney Paul Rossi. “An employee with one of the gas companies has told me that he is willing to testify that ITRR is still conducting operations for the gas companies and they are focusing in on environmental groups,” Rossi says. (In 2010 GDAC filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and ITRR on First Amendment grounds. Because it’s a private company or a “non-state actor,” the judge ruled, claims against ITRR were dismissed. The terms of a settlement with the state have not been reached. ITRR did not return requests for comment.)

Like many of the activists I spoke with, Jiunta underscored the fact that he’s never been drawn to conspiracy theories. GDAC’s code of conduct was designed to weed out those whom Jiunta described as “wackos.” Jiunta admits that he was pretty naïve when he first got involved in anti-drilling activism; he would print out large stacks of information on fracking to bring to state senators, who politely told him not to waste their time. Now, his faith in the role of government has been shattered. “People worried about being on a watch list,” he told me. “It was shocking.”

In the wake of the surveillance scandal Pennsylvania Homeland Security Director James Powers resigned and the state terminated its $103,000 no-bid contract with ITRR. Then-governor Ed Rendell called the episode “deeply embarrassing” and a one-day Senate inquiry was held. In testimony before the committee, Virginia Cody, the retired Air Force officer who had become a critic of gas drilling, said: “For the first time in my life, I do not feel secure in my home. I worry that what I say on the phone is being recorded. I wonder if my emails are still being monitored.”

The hearing sought to answer questions about how the contract was awarded, why citizen groups exercising their First Amendment rights were included, and, crucially, who received the information. Powers explained that the information was distributed to various chemical, agricultural, and transportation companies mentioned in the bulletins. At least 800 individuals were on the distribution list. In the case of gas drilling activism he explained, “It [the bulletins] went to the security directors of the Marcellus Shale companies and DEP (Department of Environmental Protection).”

This is only partially true. A list of the individuals and groups who received the bulletins shows that industry associations and PR firms that have nothing to do with protecting the state’s infrastructure were also included. For example, one of Powers’s key contacts on Marcellus-related activity was Pam Witmer, then head of the Bravo Group’s energy and environmental practice as well as president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chemical Industry Council, a business advocacy group. The Bravo Group is a public relations and lobbying firm based in Pennsylvania. Its clients include Chief Oil and Gas, Southwestern Energy, and People’s Natural Gas, all of which are deeply invested in Marcellus Shale production.

The anti-drilling movement is an “insurgency,” a PR specialist with Anadarko Petroleum says.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry lobbying group, was also on the distribution list. In 2010 the coalition signed a $900,000 lobbying contract with Ridge Global, a private security firm founded by Tom Ridge, former head of the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush. As part of its energy consulting services Ridge Global offers “advisory support for natural gas and other infrastructure security.” Ridge is just one of many former security officials who now have private consulting services. Others include John Ashcroft, Michael Chertoff, and Richard Clarke.

The blurring of public and private spying is what Dutch scholar Bob Hoogenboom calls “grey intelligence.” In a 2006 paper of the same name, Hoogenboom noted that in addition to well-known spy agencies like MI6 and the CIA, hundreds of private organizations involved in intelligence gathering have entered the market to meet corporate demand. “The idea was to do for industry what we had done for the government,” Christopher James, a former MI6 officer who founded Hakluyt, a private intelligence company whose clients have included Shell and BP, told the Financial Times. Many corporations now have their own private intelligence networks, or “para-CIAs,” to gather information on consumers, critics, and even their own shareholders. Walmart, for example, has an office of global security headed by a one-time CIA and FBI official with a staff that includes former State Department security experts. As Eveline Lubbers writes in her recent book, Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark: Corporate and Police Spying on Activists, “Because these business firms hire former spies and analysts from the ranks of government, the informal links with government intelligence increase.”

This is a global phenomenon. Corporations in Europe and Canada have also spied on environmental groups. In 2006 French energy giant EDF, the world’s largest operator of nuclear reactors, hired Kargus Consultants, a private intelligence gathering agency run by a former member of the French secret service, to spy on Greenpeace. Kargus hacked into a lead Greenpeace organizer’s computer and compiled a dossier on the organization’s European campaign strategy. In 2011 a French court fined EDF 1.5 million euros and sent two of its employees to jail on charges of illegal spying.

Although it was not raised at the Pennsylvania Senate hearing, the ITRR bulletins also were shared with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). In January a Montreal paper reported that the RCMP itself has been tracking anti-shale gas activists in Quebec. The Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Team, a branch of the RCMP, produced two reports that described the possibility of Canadian activists collaborating with “extremist” groups in the US, such as Earth First! and Occupy Well Street – an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street opposed to fracking. According to Jeff Monaghan, a researcher with the Surveillance Studies Center at Queen’s University in Ontario, the Canadian government likely shares intelligence with the energy industry. Since at least 2005 the Canadian government has held biannual intelligence briefings to share sensitive information with the private sector. In 2007 Gary Lunn, former Minister of Natural Resources, admitted his agency had helped more than 200 industry representatives obtain high-level security clearances. “This enables us to share information with industry and their associations,” Lunn said at a pipeline security forum.

Similar arrangements have been uncovered in the UK. In 2009 it was revealed that the British police and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform had provided information about Climate Camp demonstrations to E.ON, the company that runs the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. E.ON also hired private security firms like Vericola and Global Open to spy on protesters; both companies are staffed by former intelligence agents.

The specter of environmental extremism has been used to justify information sharing between law enforcement and the private sector. Last year, Joe Oliver, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, warned that environmental groups “threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.”

“It’s the new politics of the petro-state,” Monaghan says. “Anything that’s remotely linked with direct action or nonviolent civil disobedience is being described as extremism, which is the new code word of security agencies.”

The fossil fuel industry’s targeting of its critics goes beyond mere surveillance. Natural gas drilling companies have also flirted with using the dark arts of psychological warfare, or “psy ops.” In comments recorded by an anti-drilling activist at a 2011 natural gas conference in Houston and leaked to CNBC, Matt Pitzarella, director of corporate communications at Range Resources, said Range had hired “several former psy ops folks” with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Having that understanding of psy ops in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania [sic],” Pitzarella said.

At the same conference, Matt Carmichael, a PR specialist with Anadarko Petroleum, referred to the anti-drilling movement as an “insurgency” and advised industry representatives to download the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual. “There’s a lot of good lessons in there and coming from a military background, I found the insight in that extremely remarkable,” he told his colleagues.

The oil and gas industry has good reason to feel besieged. Opposition to fracking, especially, is on the rise. New York State has in place a moratorium against the drilling technique, and legislators in California are considering a similar ban. A white paper prepared by FTI Consulting, a DC-based PR firm with ties to the shale gas industry, recently warned, “Environmental activists are looking to undermine the strategies and operations of energy companies.… Adding to the activists’ momentum is the fact that a growing number of mainstream shareholders are supporting their proposals.” But given the absence of any physical attacks against drilling company assets, the industry’s view of its opponents smacks of paranoia. In August 2012, iJET International, a private security firm founded by a former National Security Agency operative, issued a risk assessment of anti-drilling protests in New York State. In one of its daily intelligence bulletins distributed to corporate clients the firm observed, “Protests against hydraulic fracturing have gained considerable momentum over the past few months…While most demonstrations have been peaceful, participants say they are hoping to intensify actions in hopes of disrupting operations at targeted facilities.”

The US Army Counterinsurgency Manual that was offered as suggested reading for shale gas industry representatives includes an appendix on Social Network Analysis, defined as “a tool for understanding the organizational dynamics of an insurgency.” In an age of digital networks and online activism, this often means using data-mining software, cyber surveillance, and in some cases outright computer hacking to track opposition groups.

At the 2011 natural gas conference in Houston the CEO of Jurat Software, Aaron Goldwater, gave a presentation on the subject of data mining and stakeholder intelligence. In his presentation he emphasized the importance of knowing the communities you work in, of tracking and mapping relationships, and compiling a sophisticated database that includes all offline and online conversations. He pointed to the military as a model. “If you look at the people who are experts at it, which is the military, the one thing they do is gather intelligence,” he told the audience.

Corporations have already taken advantage of network forensic software to keep tabs on their own employees. The new technology, which allows companies to monitor an employee’s activity down to the keystroke, is one of the fastest growing software markets. There is a fine line, however, between data mining – which is perfectly legal though largely out of view – and cyber surveillance, or hacking.

While it is difficult to prove hacking, many activists are convinced their computers have been tampered with. Kari Matsko, a professional software consultant and director of the People’s Oil and Gas Collaborative in Ohio, says her computer was hacked after she began to push for tougher regulation of the natural gas industry.

Matsko got involved in environmental activism after hydrogen sulfide gas was released from a well site near her home. In 2008 she started helping a group of citizens who had filed a lawsuit against one of the larger energy companies in Ohio on grounds of nuisance violations and loss of property value. She spent many months doing research and collecting files related to the case, some of which she described as damning.

Because of her profession Matsko has very strong computer security and says that prior to working on oil and gas issues she had never had problems with malware. But while assisting with the lawsuit Matsko’s computer was attacked by a sophisticated virus. Matsko was able to remove it and everything seemed fine. About a month later, though, she unsuccessfully tried to open the computer folder that contained the sensitive files related to the lawsuit. The files were either missing or corrupted. “I remember I was so terrified by it that I didn’t even tell people unless it was in person,” she says.

Other activists have described similar cyber security-related issues. Around the time the ITRR bulletins were made public, Jiunta told me, members of GDAC experienced persistent problems with their computers. “Everybody was getting suspicious,” he says. “I had computer issues. Some are still having issues.”

John Trallo, a 61-year-old musician and guitar instructor whose communications were also featured in the ITRR bulletins, has been an outspoken critic of shale gas development for several years. In 2007 Chief Oil and Gas offered him a signing bonus of $1,400 to lease his mineral rights. Trallo, who lives in a modest two-story home in northeastern Pennsylvania, refused. He’s been fighting the industry ever since.

“This is something that’s bigger in my life than I ever wanted it to be,” he says. “Five years ago, when I first started getting involved in this and I started talking to people, I would say to myself, ‘these people are a little crazy.’ Five years later I sound like them.”

Immediately after the intelligence bulletins were made public Trallo’s computer became nearly unusable. Documents were corrupted and irretrievable; photos were disappearing and programs wouldn’t work. A relatively new machine with a high-end operating system, Trallo had it serviced at a Best Buy in nearby Muncy. He was told by the Geek Squad at Best Buy that a highly sensitive program that acts like a Trojan Horse had been installed on his computer. According to Trallo, “They said that the program monitors every key stroke, every email, everything you do on the computer.”

Nearly all of the activists I spoke with said the Pennsylvania Homeland Security revelations, while giving them pause, had not changed their behavior. They continue to speak out, to attend public meetings, and to push for greater oversight of the industry. Still, “it leads to some scary possibilities in the future,” says Eric Belcastro, an organizer with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. “I don’t sit around being paranoid about this stuff. I just try to do what I have to do and get along with my life. But I admit the playing ground is rough and I think people need to be careful.”

Even as corporations expand their surveillance of citizen-activists, they are seeking to obstruct public oversight of their own behavior. It’s a bit like a one-way mirror of democratic transparency – with corporations and law enforcement on one side looking in and activists on the other.

Pennsylvania is a case in point. In early 2012 legislators there passed “Act 13,” a set of amendments to the state’s Oil and Gas Act, which essentially stripped local municipalities of the authority to regulate drilling activity through zoning ordinances and other measures. The law also requires doctors who treat patients exposed to fracking chemicals to sign a confidentially agreement before receiving information about the substances. The gag rule would prevent them from sharing that information with the patient or even other doctors (GDAC’s current president, Dr. Alfonso Rodriguez, is challenging this provision).

Learn more. Over at The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild has an article detailing how law enforcement agencies have spied on Occupy activists.

Earlier this year, a bill was introduced into the Pennsylvania legislature that would make it a felony to videotape farming operations in Pennsylvania – so-called “ag-gag” legislation that has already passed in Utah and Iowa, and has been introduced in several other legislatures. Many of the ag-gag bills draw on language crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act.” (In recent years ALEC has received considerable support from the natural gas industry). Section D of the ALEC bill defines an animal or ecological terrorist organization in broad terms “as any association, organization, entity, coalition, or combination of two or more persons” who seek to “obstruct, impede or deter any person from participating” not only in agricultural activity but also mining, foresting, harvesting, and gathering or processing of natural resources.

The proposed law has many anti-drilling activists worried. If such language were included in the bill (it is currently in committee and will be revised before it comes to the floor) it would greatly limit the ability of residents to photograph or video well sites, compressor stations, and pipeline development – all of which could be considered part of the “gathering or processing of natural resources.”

“It’s clearly legislation that could be easily expanded in any particular case to include folks like me who do whatever we can to get as close to some of these sites as we are able,” says Wendy Lee, a philosophy professor at Bloomsburg University who regularly photographs the industrial impacts of gas drilling and then posts them on her Flickr page.

Lee says that among anti-drilling activists there is a sense that 2013 is a do-or-die year. The state Supreme Court is set to rule on the constitutionality of Act 13. As the drilling boom moves into ever more populated areas, activists are gearing up for more focused organizing and larger nonviolent protests. With tens of thousands of wells yet to be drilled, at least this much is clear: The industry will be watching closely.

Gasland Part II contends that an industry should not be allowed to break what it cannot fix.

Gasland Part II, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday, takes us deep into the heartland of America, a land overtaken by gas extraction via fracking. The iconic and recurring depictions of water-on-fire seen in the first Gasland, in the new film serve as postcards from a travelogue through a land of broken promises, abandoned homes, and extinguished rights.

The first Gasland, (which was released in 2010 and nominated for a 2011 Academy Award) became this country’s wake-up call about fracking, the first prod for millions to look beyond the industry-engineered PR facade. Banjo music played throughout the soundtrack revealed director Josh Fox’s chosen musical instrument. But Fox became a kind of Pied Piper for a growing grass roots movement that questioned the need for fracking. Challenging the inroads claimed by the multinational gas and oil industry, fractivism is a popular and youth-driven pushback that these powerful industries are neither accustomed nor equipped to deal with.

Gasland and Gasland Part II (and films like them) unmask the human debt incurred by an array of corporate Goliaths. It turns the lens on those joining the ranks of the Davids—ordinary citizens that awaken from the American dream to discover their way of life has been redefined by impersonal corporate entities, intent on constructing new superhighways towards profits‑—right over the lives of tens of thousands of people.

They have five times the amount of coal, gas and oil that is safe to burn — and they are planning on burning it all. Left to their own devices, they’ll push us past the brink of cataclysmic disaster — life as we know it will be irrevocably altered forever. Unless we rise up and fight back.

Do The Math chronicles follows the climate crusader Bill McKibben as he works with a rising global movement in a David-vs-Goliath fight to change the terrifying math of the climate crisis.

This growing groundswell of climate activists is going after the fossil fuel industry directly, energizing a movement like the ones that overturned the great immoral institutions of the past century, such as Apartheid in South Africa. The film follows people who are putting their bodies on the line the Keystone XL Pipeline and leading universities and institutions to divest in the corporate polluters hellbent on burning fossil fuels no matter the cost.

Coral bleaching is on the rise thanks to warming waters throughout the world due to global warming and man-made chemicals dumped into our waters. As the world heats up, our fresh water ice caps melt. Devastating consequences due to global warming include fresh water entering our oceans’ natural currents from the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. This fresh water slows down the oceans’ natural salt water flow, and will eventually halt our oceans’ currents causing even bigger problems for humanity!

That is a whole different story, however it relates to increasing dead zones in saltwater and freshwater bodies thanks to man-made global warming due to the burning of finite fossil fuels. Global warming and the dumping and runoff of man-made chemicals are destroying the Gulf of Mexico, oceans, seas and large freshwater sources like the Great Lakes. Our world relies on these waters to help sustain our seafood supplies and shrinking sources of freshwater which are vital to help sustain a overpopulated earth.

Let’s take a look at one specific area, the Gulf of Mexico, which explains why we are experiencing massive coral reef bleaching, and the deaths and disappearances of fish and other sea creatures.

The most current map of dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico may not reflect BP’s massive oil spill on April 20, 2010. It does not take into consideration that BP’s oil spill killed off a large, untold number of species of ocean dwellers like the 29 marine mammals that live in the gulf including dolphins and whales. Why does the Gulf of Mexico have huge areas where the waters are devoid of most or all living organisms? There are two main reasons.

One factor is the shallow water depths in the Gulf of Mexico which is the world’s ninth largest body of water if technically separated from the Atlantic Ocean. The average water temperature of the gulf during the summer months ranges from the upper 70’s to upper 80’s. 90 degree waters are not uncommon, and marine life cannot live in what is close to bath water temperatures for humans! Why do you think hurricanes that enter the gulf during the warm months gain so much energy? The weather systems have two forces that they need which are extremely warm water and hot temperatures to help them morph from a tropical storm into a enormously destructive hurricane. Global warming has caused not just air temperatures to rise but water temperatures to increase as well. Coral reefs are fragile, and they cannot live in such a warm, polluted environment.

The other synthetic reason why our oceans and the Gulf of Mexico are experiencing slow to rapid die-offs of coral reefs and the various forms of marine life that rely on them as a inter-connected life support system is man-made chemical waste. Is it just coincidence that the ‘Dead Zone’ in the gulf is near where the Mississippi River flows into it? Fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide run-off from farms flow into tributaries of the Mississippi River and directly into the river itself. Industrial farms and factories have uncontrolled flows of pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorous that ultimately end up in the Gulf of Mexico where they create algae blooms and oxygen depletion. No oxygen = no life. Other major toxins enter our waters via illegal dumping of chemical waste that companies purposely do, because they do not want to deal with the expense of properly disposing of their garbage or toxic waste. Any trash that enters the Mississippi River will end up in the Gulf of Mexico, and it will kill or scare off all marine life, thus creating ‘Dead Zones.’

What about what is already in the Gulf of Mexico? That limited source of energy that we spend more energy to get at than what it actually produces: Oil! Take a look at the number of oil platforms in the gulf along with their locations, and think about the tainting of water and the life in it due to drilling for oil!

Then acknowledge that drilling for oil results in oil spills which have a profound and lasting effect on the environment in general including the Gulf of Mexico:

This is a U.S. problem, but it is not limited to just America! Take a look at the dead zones throughout the world as we heat up, melt away, and pollute like there is no tomorrow!

Notice that even the Great Lakes, the world’s largest source of freshwater, is in trouble directly due to pollution including plastics! There are vast areas in the oceans too that are nothing more than giant, floating garbage dump sites! This is the way we treat our planet, and the dying of our oceans’ and other waterways’ is akin to the ‘Canary in the Coalmine’ scenario. Unless we drastically alter the course of society’s sails, then we are in for some rough waters ahead!

Is that not a pretty picture? It is what happens to our land when we rely on finite sources of dirty fossil fuel energy. Say goodbye to the trees, the animals, and a clean environment! The picture is not of a Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking site. It is a picture of the lesser known Sand Fracking that goes on to supply the needed Silica sand for the extremely toxic Hydraulic Fracking process of which there are now 65,000 wells and counting throughout the U.S.

The premium sand that is ideal for Hydraulic Fracturing or Horizontal Fracturing has been found by businessmen, mainly from Texas, and the high quality sand is in Wisconsin and Minnesota! A little-known company called Glacier Sands LLC a.k.a. Seven Sands LLC is responsible for this “gold rush” in the Sand Fracking industry. Their webpage looks innocent, but looks can be deceiving!

Let’s break down three key people in their leadership: Brian Iverson, Ryan Thomas and Ike Thomas. Brian Iverson drew the attention of Texas businessmen Ike and Ryan Thomas, and he formally set up Glacier Sands LLC a.k.a. Seven Sands LLC in 2011 using a Wisconsin address although he lived in Minnesota. Brian Iverson has not only been accused of investment fraud related to a group of mining investors from Montana, but he also filed bankruptcy a little over two years ago to cover over $21 million of debt he accrued related to former business deals “and personal guaranties he gave as security for business loans.” Source: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2012/07/09/frac-sand-or-farmland-wisconsin-farmers-face-showdown-rescheduled-august-9

Boy, this Brian Iverson guy sounds like bad news! He’s shady at best, and he has hooked up with two Texas businessmen since 2011 to completely destroy (see picture above) Wisconsin and Minnesota’s pristine environment by slithering in like a snake to slowly poison innocent citizens who have lived here for generations. What for? GREED, of course! Brian Iverson needed help to become financially successful, because he has a dirty past of screwing people over, then filing bankruptcy for his losses! Iverson is the epitome of selfishness! He obviously does not care about people in general or his workers, since I am sure he is aware of the dangers of Silicosis and cancer.

Sand Fracking for Crystalline Silica is known to cause Silicosis and cancer. Source: OSHA: http://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/data_General_Facts/crystalline-factsheet.pdf The Silica sand from Sand Fracking can blow for miles if not continually watered down according to lame government standards. At best, the Crystalline Silica produced from Sand Fracking to use in Hydraulic Fracking will only affect nearby areas to include the Mississippi River. That is bad enough if you live in a state where Sand Fracking sites are popping up faster than they can be properly studied for health risks before approval! Without proper studies on the harmful effects and affects of fracking, county boards like Buffalo County, WI just delay the permit for Sand Fracking until all of the ‘angry citizen’ dust has settled. Then, they go in and vote 3-0 in favor of what nobody wants except for the dirty fossil fuel industry and big business like Glacier Sands LLC! I wonder how many board members and other officials get paid to pass legislation for mining that is NOT wanted by a vast majority of U.S. citizens in general? Probably more than one can possibly imagine! Brian Iverson had help from Ike and Ryan Thomas though. Anything coming out of the most polluted state (Texas) in the U.S. for over a decade and running cannot be good!

Is this what our country wants? A monkey barrel of bullies overrunning our local governments to feed their lust for money and power? Apparently so, because I do not see anyone standing up en masse to protest fraudulent businessmen. Businessmen who sucker farmers or anyone else with many acres of land via a greed-laden but small payout for ruining not only the farmer’s or individual’s land, but the land, water, complete infrastructure to include roads and buildings of towns and cities, and health of humans and animals!

Do you think that Glacier Sands or any other “Fracking” business is going to pay for human health problems which show up years or decades later, or the contamination of our land and water in general? They will be long gone by the time we catch up to the mess they have left behind! Taxpayers, as usual, will be stuck cleaning up dirty mining’s mess due to lack of current concern or ability to do much of anything to stop the Sand Fracking nightmare that consumes Wisconsin and Minnesota! It’s such a shame too, because if you can stop the Sand Fracking from happening then you can halt the even more dangerous Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking that uses Crystalline Silica in large quantities. Fracking, like Glacier Sands is doing, has already turned America’s landscape from this

02-27-2013 Ecowatch

Laurel Peltier

In 1989, Dusty and Tamera Hagy bought 81 rural acres in Jackson County, West Virginia. Twenty-one years later, the Hagys sued four natural gas drilling firms alleging the natural gas wells drilled on their property in 2008 contaminated their drinking water and caused physical harm.

The Hagys’ water contamination lawsuit demonstrates how the natural gas industry has built a near-perfect “federal legal exemption’s framework” that when combined with lax or absent state regulations and the legal system’s high costs, inherently approves of citizen collateral damage with no restitution.

The consequence of this framework is that the burden of proof is placed on plaintiffs who, at best, are forced to settle with natural gas companies, thereby sealing the case from public scrutiny, scientific examination and legal precedence. Because the Hagys didn’t sign a non-disclosure agreement with the natural gas companies involved, their legal case gives the public a rare window into how fracking lawsuits play out in reality.

Natural gas is a critical resource. Fifty percent of American residences use natural gas. Natural gas is seen by some as a bridge fuel essential to the U.S.’s strategy to gain energy independence from foreign oil imports. Yet we must ask ourselves: Is the current fracking system one we should support? Are changes needed to level the playing field for all parties involved in fracking? Can fracking be done safely?

The land man cometh

Dusty and Tamera Hagy unwittingly fell into the fracking trap the day they bought their land in 1989. “We loved our 81-acre property, it was our life. We had paid off the mortgage and spent a lot of money fixing the place up. We raised our two boys there, buried our animals there and were planning to give our boys some property,” said Dusty Hagy.

Mineral rights, fracking chemicals and natural gas federal environmental laws were all Greek to the Hagy family before a pleasant Equitable Production Company representative visited the couple in October 2007.

Equitable Production Company’s representative informed the Hagys that four natural gas wells were soon to be drilled on their property about 1,000 feet up the hill from their home.

In West Virginia, surface land ownership is separate from mineral rights. Mineral rights are the portion of the profits received from minerals extracted from land. Another party owns the Hagy property’s mineral rights which were granted hundreds of years ago. The Hagy family receives no gas royalties and didn’t sign a formal gas leasing contract, though, they did sign plenty of “papers” believing they did not have a choice.

Fracking starts – trucks, noise, explosions, and chemicals

On Nov. 11, 2007, trucks, back hoes, tree cutters and workers converged on the Hagy property uphill and upstream from their home. Equitable outsourced the drilling to BJ Services and for the next six months the holler, or enclosed valley, was flattened for a six-acre natural gas well pad.

Tamera Hagy describes life during the drilling and fracking: “It was nothing like what I had expected. This was a huge operation that lasted day and night for eight months. Trucks went up and down the road 24/7. The smell of fumes would make you sick. One night we heard something like a giant drill bit drilling and vibrating under our house.”

Dusty visited the well pad often and learned from the job crew that this fracking job wasn’t going smoothly. One worker mentioned that they had hit a lake of water and were moving the rig. Another worker shared in this audio tape #3 how the cement casing “went bad” and was re-cemented. Of the four open and lined fracking wastewater ponds, one overflowed and later broke, spilling the fracking wastewater into the nearby creek that flows from the well pad past the Hagy family’s home. In March 2008, Dusty noticed that another fracking pond’s wastewater was emptied by hose into the woods. After finding foam and oil slicks in the creek next to their well, and then when their large pond turned green, the Hagys knew something wasn’t right.

Dusty lodged a formal complaint with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Nov. 17, 2008. DEP records reveal a gas inspector visited the site at the well’s completion and issued no violations. DEP records also reveal the three natural gas wells began producing gas in July 2008 and the wells today continue to produce about 3,000 m.c.f. of gas per month.

Be careful what you sign

As Dusty describes the Equitable representative, “We liked him, and he was a nice enough guy in the beginning and we believed everything he told us at face value.” Equitable said the natural gas drilling was simple and would cause minimal damage on 1.5 acres. When Dusty asked if fracking used anything dangerous, they were told that only water and sand were used, no chemicals were ever mentioned. A water test prior to drilling supported the Hagy’s belief that their water well was clean and safe.

On Oct. 22, 2007, Equitable paid the Hagys $19,000 to cover surface damages to their land and trees because building a well pad trashes the landscape. “I believed the Equitable guy when he said the check was just for surface damages. My property was valued at nearly $200,000. It was stupid to sign that paper, I should have gotten a lawyer,” explained Dusty. Because the well pads used more than the original 1.5 acres, Equitable paid the couple another $10,000 for damage on an additional four acres.

Later in 2008, Dusty learned the papers they had signed to receive the payments were actually damage release contracts attempting to exempt Equitable, and all drilling providers, from any and all damages associated with the drilling. “Other than shooting the family dog, this ‘contract’ covered near everything,” said Dusty Hagy.

Family gets sick—headaches, rashes and vomiting

The family drank, bathed and cooked with their well water from November 2007 to November 2008 during the gas well drilling and fracking. Ironically, the Hagy family had boasted about their pristine well water and even after their adult sons moved out, the boys brought jugs of well water back to their homes.

The Hagys began to notice changes to their water in early 2008. Their water volume was dropping and the water’s color changed from clear to brown. Often black particles were floating in water drawn from their well. Despite overwhelming evidence otherwise, Equitable never reported any issues that would impact the Hagys’ well water.

Adding to the changing water quality, both Dusty and Tamera said they were oddly tired, and woke up with “bad headaches, like a hangover.” Both smelled an “acid” odor in the house and their eyes would burn in certain rooms.

The Hagys didn’t put “two plus two together” until their youngest son went to his family doctor in Columbus, Ohio in October 2008. Their son had complained of nausea and was spitting up blood. His doctor treated him for acid reflux, a disorder he’d never experienced before, and suggested he stop drinking his parent’s well water. The son’s symptoms disappeared soon after he discontinued drinking his parent’s well water.

Based on their complaints, Equitable re-tested the Hagy water well on Nov. 8, 2008 and their water had clearly changed. The turbidity, or murkiness, was six times greater post drilling (0.5 to 3.2) and iron, manganese and calcium levels increased significantly (Dusty replaced one hot water heater during this time due to calcium build-up).

Water tests conducted later also revealed arsenic, lead, barium and Bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, an organic compound linked to fracking wastewater. The radon levels of the Hagy well were 1,233 pCi/l with the maximum contaminant level set at 300. When those radon levels were compared to area wells, the Hagy’s radon in their drinking water was markedly higher than eight local U.S. Geologic Survey wells in the area.

However, the water tests conducted before and after drilling were limited and included no tests for known fracking chemicals or volatile organic compounds.

In November 2008, Equitable told the couple, “the water was bad” and to stop drinking the well water and the company began supplying bottled drinking water.

On Jan. 13, 2009, Dusty and Tamera vacated their home and have never moved back. “We thought we were going to die,” said Dusty Hagy.

Relations with Equitable were getting tense; Dusty even began recording phone conversations. Repeated requests for a list of the chemicals used in fracking went unanswered.

Dusty Hagy assumed Equitable would fix the water issue based on phone conversations (audio tape #1) with his Equitable representative who stated on the phone:

“ … for whatever reason the water’s been affected because of our drilling process. But the horizontal portion of it I don’t think had anything to do with it. Something we did had something to do with it. We have done something to the water, and no one was doubting that, but it wasn’t the horizontal part. I’m not doubtin’ that fact and I don’t think anybody’s doubtin’ that, the horizontal portion wouldn’t affect it.”

Equitable offered to drill a new water well which the family declined because they believed the aquifer itself was contaminated. This belief stemmed from a neighbor’s claim that 30 of his animals had died in 2008 during the gas drilling. Plus, Equitable tied any restitution to the couple signing an non-disclosure agreement, or gag order, meant to silence the Hagys and negate any future claims.

Hagy family sues drilling firms

As this phone conversation (audio tape #3) with Equitable reveals, once the family sought legal representation in March 2009, all contact with Equitable stopped. Bottled water deliveries and hotel payments stopped. While the couple searched for a rental home, they lived in their un-heated camper. On a positive note, once they vacated their home, their negative health symptoms dissipated.

The Hagys sued Equitable Production Company, BJ Well, Halliburton and Warren Drilling in October 2009. In short, even with the taped calls, drilling records, photos, videos and water tests, the Hagys’ lawsuit was “dismissed” in August 2012. Judge Goodwin’s opinion stated, “The case presents no genuine issue of materials fact for a jury to determine.” The lawsuit is in the appeals process and the litigation costs to date are $175,000.

How does this happen?

Though the Hagys’ lawsuit appears to provide evidence of water contamination, their dismissed lawsuit supports the claim, “There are no known cases of drinking water contamination from fracking,” often touted by pro-fracking groups.

This claim isn’t true, at least 4 confirmed cases of water contamination exist:

The natural gas industry is exempted from seven major federal environmental laws. These laws in their simplest forms are intended to protect people, places, water and air. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is tasked with enforcing these laws. Because the natural gas industry isn’t regulated by the U.S. EPA at the federal level because of the legal exemptions, natural gas drilling is regulated on a state-by-state basis.

The chart below outlines the seven federal environmental laws exemptions, with many exemptions dating back decades.

The latest three exemptions were strategically written into the 1,500 page Energy Policy Act of 2005 and are now infamously named the “Halliburton loophole.” These three short paragraphs focused on eliminating water pollution oversight and also eliminated the strict environmental reviews that federal projects must undertake.

When these exemptions are combined, the benefits to natural gas industry are: no federal EPA oversight therefore pushing fracking regulation to the state level, no scientific testing, no environmental studies, no health and geologic studies and no liabilities for drillers of chemical releases into waterways and air.

The 2005 Energy Policy Act’s strategy was to provide the U.S. with “an abundant, domestic and affordable sources of fuel.” Since 2005, the gas industry has been unhampered by federal regulations and the newer shale gas drilling has grown quickly; U.S. natural gas from shale reserves has grown from one percent to 35 percent of the U.S. supply. This new supply of 8.5 trillion cubic feet of gas has forced natural gas prices down by 50 percent, even spurring coal-based electrical plants to convert to natural gas.

The coffin nail: Toxic Release Inventory exemption

The least known exemption though, the 1986 Toxic Release Inventory of Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, may offer the natural gas industry the biggest shield from liabilities and the greatest obstacle for parties alleging fracking water contamination.

In response to the Bopal, India disaster, when Union Carbide released a harmful gas into an urban area which killed more than 20,000 people, Congress required industries to list harmful chemicals on the Toxic Release Inventory to the EPA. The EPA collects and then disseminates that information to the public and local governments.

Yet, oil and gas companies were exempted from the Toxic Release Inventory, therefore chemical disclosure is different for each of the 29 fracking states. To boot, shale gas production, or fracking, is concentrated in relatively gas-friendly states: Texas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, West Virginia, Colorado and North Dakota, listed in order of gas production volume.

According to an in-depth National Resources Defense Council report which compares today’s hodgepodge of state-level fracking regulations, no state requires full chemical disclosure. Even new regulations in Texas, the largest shale gas producer, require chemical reporting but do not require “proprietary” chemicals to be listed which can account for 50 percent of the chemicals used in one fracking. The report also concludes that state reporting is inconsistent and significant portions of data are missing altogether.

Adding to the lack of chemical disclosure, only two states (West Virginia and Colorado) inform residents about new wells before drilling. This means that in 27 states, residents are not notified of new drilling, making it impossible to conduct comprehensive (and expensive) water testing before the drilling.

How exemptions play out in the law-can you prove what you drank?

In 2007, Equitable wasn’t legally required to disclose the chemicals used in the fracking, therefore no doctor, no person or group knew what chemicals to test for or what caused the foam in the creek, the color changes in the pond or the compromised water well.

Though water tests revealed the Hagy property drinking water had changed since the drilling had occurred, the tests were not apples-to-apples comparisons. During the lawsuit’s evidence discovery process, the natural gas firms finally furnished the list of chemical used on the Hagy property which verified the fracking chemicals used weren’t “just water and sand,” as quoted by the Equitable contact.

The absence of verifiable chemical data is displayed in Judge Goodwin’s opinion and order to grant a motion for Summary Judgement, which in layman’s terms means the Hagy lawsuit was dismissed. The burden of chemical exposure proof was placed on the plaintiffs, “to demonstrate amount, duration, intensity and frequency of chemical exposure.” A catch-22.

Gas leases and contracts: The devil’s in the fine print

Adding to the chemical disclosure catch-22 is that most gas leases heavily favor natural gas drillers. In 2011, The New York Times analyzed more than 110,000 shale gas leases and concluded; over half of gas leases provide landowners no restitution in the event of harm, most exclude any explanation of potential harm and a majority of leases include automatic contract extensions that require no landowner approval. Natural gas wells can produce for decades and gas lease contracts can be automatically renewed in perpetuity. Many leases include clauses mandating that damage disputes be heard in arbitration outside of the legal system.

The door-to-door leasing agents who represent gas drillers, a.k.a. landmen, are tasked with getting natural gas leases signed by landowners. Feedback from many landowners is that landmen are very persuasive, personable and often mis-represent facts. These revealing talking pointspages were reportedly found by a Ohio homeowner who had been visited by a West Bay Exploration’s leasing agent. The talking points, marked confidential, give sales agents advice to, “not talk about the anti-fracking documentary Gasland, to not discuss chemicals or fracking and to speed up the lease signing before people think about the drilling.”

Many natural gas leases border on predatory in nature as it appears the gas leasing process relies on the ignorance of rural, landowners to enter into binding, private contracts with natural gas drillers.

The Hagys claim they were absolutely unaware they had signed a damage release waiver, twice even. “The Equitable representative sat right on my porch and said the cash was a small payment for the trees and land damage. It wasn’t until November 2008 that I even found out I supposedly had signed away any rights,” said Dusty.

These two damage release forms inadvertently signed by the Hagys have reared their ugly heads during the lawsuit process as another reason Equitable and BJ Services claim they are not liable for any water, health or property damage; the companies claim the Hagys signed away any rights to liabilities and restitution.

Suing a gas company—expensive and grueling

“Fracking has been the tragedy of the commons—freedom to a common, brings ruin to all,” according to Maxwell Kennerly, a trial lawyer at The Beasley firm in Philadelphia. Legally it’s been impossible for plaintiffs to precisely pinpoint exactly what happened underground or link exact chemicals to a situation when those chemicals aren’t divulged and the drilling process isn’t accessible. Any lawyer taking these cases has to be prepared to put their own money and resources on the line to be a trailblazer.”

The first legal team hired by the Hagy family in 2009 dropped the Hagys’ case one year later. During that year the family lost valuable time in conducting water tests and gathering evidence. Their current lawyer, Kevin Thompson, of the Law Offices of Thompson Barney in Charleston, West Virginia, has taken the case on a contingency fee basis. The Hagy family has paid no out-of-pocket expenses. The lawsuit’s litigation costs to date top $175,000.

Lastly, there is an emotional toll for using our legal system to get restitution; it’s a grueling process according to Dusty Hagy. “It’s been hell. For over two years, we’ve been reliving this awful experience. In the back-of-our-minds we realize this may be all for nothing. My wife and I feel we had our most important asset stolen from us, the drinking water that makes our property a place to live, not just 81 acres for animals. It feels like the whole system is stacked against us.”

Where are the Hagys?

Interestingly, the Hagys and 70 of their neighbors who live on a 5-mile stretch of Sugar Creek Road have petitioned Southern Jackson County Public Services to extend public water service to their homes at cost of $2 million. The project is on an 5-year waiting list and there is no guarantee it will ever be completed. According to Karl Vielhaber, general manager for the Southern Jackson County Public Service, the property owners have petitioned for municipal water because most claim their water wells are contaminated from gas drilling. Most of the homeowners haul water to their homes from a coin operated water source.

Dusty and Tamera have moved to a new property with a mortgage, and they still own their vacated property. Equitable’s three natural gas wells still produce gas today and may for years on the Hagys’ vacant property.

The winners and losers

A clear winner in fracking so far is natural gas industry. Fracking cases settled out-of-court provide critical benefits for the gas industry because the settlements include “gag orders” so that injured parties can not discuss the case and its contents. Financially, settlements reduce liabilities for natural gas firms by eliminating unpredictable jury awards. More importantly, settlements help the industry maintain their public relation’s campaign to the media, elected officials, the financial industry and the American consumer that natural gas drilling is clean and safe.

American consumers are also winners in the fracking story. According to the Energy Information Administration, residential gas prices are about 50 percent less than the 2008 natural gas price peak.

Fracking’s losers are the private landowners who have been negatively impacted by fracking and may or may not have received proper restitution. Collectively, the public loses as closed settlements shut down any learning, studies or analysis needed to create uniform industry best practices and build legal precedence for future cases.

Fracking regulations are slowly developing. The Obama Administration announced federal regulations mandating methane capturing at well sites. State legislatures are slowly developing new rules with Pennsylvania creating some of the toughest legislation over wastewater recycling and charging per well fees to pay for damages. But, as the Center for Energy Economics and Policy’s website and National Resourced Defense Council report illustrate, fracking regulation is complicated and convoluted.

What can you do?

Stories like this can often leave readers with an uneasy question: “What can I do?” Hear are a few ideas.

Contact your federal and state elected officials. Your state elected officials are key as fracking is exempt from federal regulation and it seems Washington is struggling to make any changes with pretty much anything. Sending a quick email to your state delegates and senator with a link to this post takes 30 seconds and alerts your elected officials that fracking is on your radar screen. Make your opinion on the current process known.

Choose a fracking group from below that matches your point of view and sign-up for their newsletters. Add them to your twitter feed or friend on facebook to keep abreast of new regulations and issues. If you’re a Flipboarder, add fracking to your list.

The groups below often include easy “call-to-actions” where your voice can be heard. Interestingly, all but a few people in these groups and grassroots organizations are volunteers.

This facade will not last much longer! The amount of “insider trading” going on is so big that Google’s own CEO sold off 42% of his total portfolio – all Google shares! Market analysts on the inside track are sounding alarm bells, so that certainly cannot be good! Talks of ‘major’ “corrections,” otherwise known as “crashes,” are growing in intensity and numbers. Europe is falling apart including our close ally England, and countries like Spain, Italy and France are bankrupt! Last week, Spain begged for another bailout, but the EU, at Germany’s nudging, said “NO!” “We don’t have the funds to prop you up” were supposedly uttered. The U.S. economy is not any better!

Our GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, dropped last month. The last time it dropped the market hemorrhaged. It’s one leading indicator of where our economy is really at, and a helpful warning of a possible and substantial drop in the Dow and all other markets across the globe. Unfortunately, what goes up so far (and the Dow will likely peak high one more time before it crashes and burns) must come down to equally sustain a balance. Here’s the problem though.

The U.S. Government has been fudging its economic books for far too long. “Cooking the books” as the old adage goes! You can only make crap up for so long before it over-spills into the general public. That process is just barely beginning, but it has begun. Americans want to know the truth from their leaders, but the web of deception is so twisted and tangled that citizens are unlikely to hear the full truth of what is really going on?

We are mostly adults. We can handle the lies, mass corruption, the raping of the middle class along with the poor class, again. But, listening requires too much effort these days! Americans are interesting. We have been brainwashed into having the attention spans of gnats, so we forget about the really urgent issues our country faces thanks to the CEOs, big banks and mega-corporations running our U.S. Government and running the U.S. into a brick wall with reinforced steel and concrete! The U.S. economy will come to a complete standstill after it collapses and/or China and Russia flip the switch and completely stop buying up U.S. dollars and debt. THEN, we will have no other choice to pay attention, because it will be a matter of life and death. Our dependence on oil, our addiction to it, has made it very hard to stop our govt. from gobbling up the world’s natural resources like a cocaine addict following a white line! After all, oil makes up most of what consumers buy these days, from a toothbrush to a car tire. We passed the peak, finite fossil fuel oil’s maximum output for the rest of earth’s existence back in 2008. Saudi Arabia is running low on oil now, because we consume such massive quantities of it. They had 25% of the world’s oil. We could use a little oil or lube right now.

The historical collapse of the U.S. markets and the economy is going to happen. It’s inevitable that the false economic security bubble that we are living in is going to burst which will cause a massively painful slide into a negative abyss. Worst of all, we may not have the resources to just jump-start the burnt out motor of the U.S. economy. Buy seeds, and not Monsanto’s GMOs! Buy organic. You’ll be planting your own food in the near future!

I live in the beautiful state of Wisconsin, with the exception of the bone-chilling cold during January and February! One of my state’s senators sent me a letter informing me that, in short, mining here can be done safely with minimal environmental impact.

There is no such thing as “safe mining!” The two words when put together are polar opposites of each other. I like my idea better, so I emailed it off to him! You can do the same with all of your state’s elected officials, including your governor, by sending them a clear, resounding message that it is (way past) time to divest from dirty, finite energy and invest in cheaper, clean, renewable energy starting today! Our climate is screaming for help, and we can no longer let our legislators promote their hidden, greed-laden agendas!

Here is a copy of a brief letter that I just sent off to Senator Cullen:

Dear Senator Cullen:

There is no need for mining of any kind in the great state of Wisconsin where I was born and raised! Mining for finite, dirty energy sources is dangerous, unhealthy to the workers, and unhealthy to the rest of Wisconsinites, since there is always pollution runoff or overflow. This runoff or overflow is NOT properly regulated by the EPA or its WI branch!

We have a vested interest to divest from dirty energy and invest in clean, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro-electric and geothermal power. Our environment desperately needs this in order to avert catastrophic weather changes that are steadily increasing in numbers and intensity! For the sake of humanity and its future generations, please take mining off of Wisconsin’s energy table! We deserve better, cheaper energy alternatives, and most importantly, so do our children!

Hydraulic fracturing has helped to expand natural gas production in the United States,
unlocking large natural gas supplies in shale and other unconventional formations across the
country. As a result of hydraulic fracturing and advances in horizontal drilling technology,
natural gas production in 2010 reached the highest level in decades. According to new estimates by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States possesses natural gas resources sufficient to supply the United States for approximately 110 years.
As the use of hydraulic fracturing has grown, so have concerns about its environmental
and public health impacts. One concern is that hydraulic fracturing fluids used to fracture rock
formations contain numerous chemicals that could harm human health and the environment,
especially if they enter drinking water supplies. The opposition of many oil and gas companies
to public disclosure of the chemicals they use has compounded this concern.
Last Congress, the Committee on Energy and Commerce launched an investigation to
examine the practice of hydraulic fracturing in the United States. As part of that inquiry, the
Committee asked the 14 leading oil and gas service companies to disclose the types and volumes of the hydraulic fracturing products they used in their fluids between 2005 and 2009 and the chemical contents of those products. This report summarizes the information provided to the Committee.

Between 2005 and 2009, the 14 oil and gas service companies used more than 2,500
hydraulic fracturing products containing 750 chemicals and other components. Overall, these
companies used 780 million gallons of hydraulic fracturing products – not including water added
at the well site – between 2005 and 2009.

Some of the components used in the hydraulic fracturing products were common and
generally harmless, such as salt and citric acid. Some were unexpected, such as instant coffee
and walnut hulls. And some were extremely toxic, such as benzene and lead. Appendix A lists
each of the 750 chemicals and other components used in hydraulic fracturing products between
2005 and 2009.

The most widely used chemical in hydraulic fracturing during this time period, as
measured by the number of compounds containing the chemical, was methanol. Methanol,
which was used in 342 hydraulic fracturing products, is a hazardous air pollutant and is on the
candidate list for potential regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Some of the other
most widely used chemicals were isopropyl alcohol (used in 274 products), 2-butoxyethanol
(used in 126 products), and ethylene glycol (used in 119 products).

Between 2005 and 2009, the oil and gas service companies used hydraulic fracturing
products containing 29 chemicals that are (1) known or possible human carcinogens, (2)
regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act for their risks to human health, or (3) listed as
hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. These 29 chemicals were components of more
than 650 different products used in hydraulic fracturing.

The BTEX compounds – benzene, toluene, xylene, and ethylbenzene – appeared in 60 of
the hydraulic fracturing products used between 2005 and 2009. Each BTEX compound is a
regulated contaminant under the Safe Drinking Water Act and a hazardous air pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Benzene also is a known human carcinogen. The hydraulic fracturing companies injected 11.4 million gallons of products containing at least one BTEX chemical over the five year period.

In many instances, the oil and gas service companies were unable to provide the
Committee with a complete chemical makeup of the hydraulic fracturing fluids they used.
Between 2005 and 2009, the companies used 94 million gallons of 279 products that contained at least one chemical or component that the manufacturers deemed proprietary or a trade secret. Committee staff requested that these companies disclose this proprietary information. Although some companies did provide information about these proprietary fluids, in most cases the companies stated that they did not have access to proprietary information about products they purchased “off the shelf” from chemical suppliers. In these cases, the companies are injecting fluids containing chemicals that they themselves cannot identify.

II. BACKGROUND

Hydraulic fracturing – a method by which oil and gas service companies provide access
to domestic energy trapped in hard-to-reach geologic formations — has been the subject of both enthusiasm and increasing environmental and health concerns in recent years. Hydraulic
fracturing, used in combination with horizontal drilling, has allowed industry to access natural
gas reserves previously considered uneconomical, particularly in shale formations. As a result of
the growing use of hydraulic fracturing, natural gas production in the United States reached
21,577 billion cubic feet in 2010, a level not achieved since a period of high natural gas
production between 1970 and 1974.1 Overall, the Energy Information Administration now
projects that the United States possesses 2,552 trillion cubic feet of potential natural gas
resources, enough to supply the United States for approximately 110 years. Natural gas from
shale resources accounts for 827 trillion cubic feet of this total, which is more than double what
the EIA estimated just a year ago.

Hydraulic fracturing creates access to more natural gas supplies, but the process requires
the use of large quantities of water and fracturing fluids, which are injected underground at high
volumes and pressure. Oil and gas service companies design fracturing fluids to create fractures and transport sand or other granular substances to prop open the fractures. The composition of these fluids varies by formation, ranging from a simple mixture of water and sand to more complex mixtures with a multitude of chemical additives. The companies may use these

chemical additives to thicken or thin the fluids, improve the flow of the fluid, or kill bacteria that can reduce fracturing performance. Some of these chemicals, if not disposed of safely or allowed to leach into the drinking water supply, could damage the environment or pose a risk to human health. During hydraulic fracturing, fluids containing chemicals are injected deep underground, where their migration is not entirely predictable. Well failures, such as the use of insufficient well casing, could lead to their release at shallower depths, closer to drinking water supplies. Although some fracturing fluids are removed from the well at the end of the fracturing process, a substantial amount remains underground.

While most underground injections of chemicals are subject to the protections of the Safe
Drinking Water Act (SDWA), Congress in 2005 modified the law to exclude “the underground
injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing
operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities” from the Act’s protections.6
Unless oil and gas service companies use diesel in the hydraulic fracturing process, the
permanent underground injection of chemicals used for hydraulic fracturing is not regulated by
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Concerns also have been raised about the ultimate outcome of chemicals that are
recovered and disposed of as wastewater. This wastewater is stored in tanks or pits at the well
site, where spills are possible. For final disposal, well operators must either recycle the fluids
for use in future fracturing jobs, inject it into underground storage wells (which, unlike the
fracturing process itself, are subject to the Safe Drinking Water Act), discharge it to nearby
surface water, or transport it to wastewater treatment facilities. A recent report in the New York

For instance, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection has cited Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation for contamination of drinking water wells with seepage caused by weak casing or improper cementing of a natural gas well. See Officials in Three States Pin Water Woes on Gas Drilling, ProPublica (Apr. 26, 2009) (online at www.propublica.org/article/officials-in-three-states-pin-water-woes-on-gas-drilling-426) (accessed Mar. 24, 2011).

John A. Veil, Argonne National Laboratory, Water Management Technologies Used by
Marcellus Shale Gas Producers, prepared for the Department of Energy (July 2010), at 13
(hereinafter “Water Management Technologies”).

42 U.S.C. § 300h(d). Many dubbed this provision the “Halliburton loophole” because
of Halliburton’s ties to then-Vice President Cheney and its role as one of the largest providers of
hydraulic fracturing services. See The Halliburton Loophole, New York Times (Nov. 9. 2009).

Times raised questions about the safety of surface water discharge and the ability of water
treatment facilities to process wastewater from natural gas drilling operations.

Any risk to the environment and human health posed by fracturing fluids depends in large
part on their contents. Federal law, however, contains no public disclosure requirements for oil
and gas producers or service companies involved in hydraulic fracturing, and state disclosure
requirements vary greatly. While the industry has recently announced that it soon will create a
public database of fluid components, reporting to this database is strictly voluntary, disclosure
will not include the chemical identity of products labeled as proprietary, and there is no way to
determine if companies are accurately reporting information for all wells.

The absence of a minimum national baseline for disclosure of fluids injected during the
hydraulic fracturing process and the exemption of most hydraulic fracturing injections from
regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act has left an informational void concerning the
contents, chemical concentrations, and volumes of fluids that go into the ground during
fracturing operations and return to the surface in the form of wastewater. As a result, regulators
and the public are unable effectively to assess any impact the use of these fluids may have on the environment or public health.

III. METHODOLOGY

On February 18, 2010, the Committee commenced an investigation into the practice of hydraulic fracturing and its potential impact on water quality across the United States. This investigation built on work begun by Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman in 2007 as Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The Committee initially sent letters to eight oil and gas service companies engaged in hydraulic fracturing in the United States. In May 2010, the Committee sent letters to six additional oil and gas service companies to assess a

[Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers, New York Times (Feb. 26, 2011).

Wyoming, for example, recently enacted relatively strong disclosure regulations,
requiring disclosure on a well-by-well basis and “for each stage of the well stimulation
program,” “the chemical additives, compounds and concentrations or rates proposed to be mixed and injected.” See WCWR 055-000-003 Sec. 45. Similar regulations became effective in
Arkansas this year. See Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission Rule B-19. In Wyoming, much of
this information is, after an initial period of review, available to the public. See WCWR 055-
000-003 Sec. 21. Other states, however, do not insist on such robust disclosure. For instance,
West Virginia has no disclosure requirements for hydraulic fracturing and expressly exempts
fluids used during hydraulic fracturing from the disclosure requirements applicable to
underground injection of fluids for purposes of waste storage. See W. Va. Code St. R. § 34-5-7.

broader range of industry practices. The February and May letters requested information on
the type and volume of chemicals present in the hydraulic fracturing products that each company used in their fluids between 2005 and 2009.

The 14 oil and gas service companies that received the letter voluntarily provided
substantial information to the Committee. As requested, the companies reported the names and
volumes of the products they used during the five-year period. For each hydraulic fracturing
product reported, the companies also provided a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) detailing
the product’s chemical components. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) requires chemical manufacturers to create a MSDS for every product they sell as a
means to communicate potential health and safety hazards to employees and employers. The
MSDS must list all hazardous ingredients if they comprise at least 1% of the product; for
carcinogens, the reporting threshold is 0.1%.

Under OSHA regulations, manufacturers may withhold the identity of chemical
components that constitute “trade secrets.” If the MSDS for a particular product used by a
company subject to the Committee’s investigation reported that the identity of any chemical
component was a trade secret, the Committee asked the company that used that product to
provide the proprietary information, if available.

IV. HYDRAULIC FRACTURING FLUIDS AND THEIR CONTENTS

Between 2005 and 2009, the 14 oil and gas service companies used more than 2,500
hydraulic fracturing products containing 750 chemicals and other components. Overall, these
companies used 780 million gallons of hydraulic fracturing products in their fluids between 2005
and 2009. This volume does not include water that the companies added to the fluids at the well
site before injection. The products are comprised of a wide range of chemicals. Some are
seemingly harmless like sodium chloride (salt), gelatin, and citric acid. Others could pose a
severe risk to human health or the environment.

BJ Services, Halliburton, and Schlumberger already had provided the Oversight
Committee with data for 2005 through 2007. For BJ Services, the 2005-2007 data is limited to
natural gas wells. For Schlumberger, the 2005-2007 data is limited to coalbed methane wells.

29 CFR 1910.1200(g)(2)(i)(C)(1).

29 CFR 1910.1200.

Each hydraulic fracturing “product” is a mixture of chemicals or other components
designed to achieve a certain performance goal, such as increasing the viscosity of water. Some
oil and gas service companies create their own products; most purchase these products from
chemical vendors. The service companies then mix these products together at the well site to
formulate the hydraulic fracturing fluids that they pump underground.]

Some of the components were surprising. One company told the Committee that it used
instant coffee as one of the components in a fluid designed to inhibit acid corrosion. Two
companies reported using walnut hulls as part of a breaker—a product used to degrade the
fracturing fluid viscosity, which helps to enhance post-fracturing fluid recovery. Another
company reported using carbohydrates as a breaker. One company used tallow soap—soap
made from beef, sheep, or other animals—to reduce loss of fracturing fluid into the exposed
rock.

Appendix A lists each of the 750 chemicals and other components used in the hydraulic
fracturing products injected underground between 2005 and 2009.

A. Commonly Used Chemical Components
The most widely used chemical in hydraulic fracturing during this time period, as
measured by the number of products containing the chemical, was methanol. Methanol is a
hazardous air pollutant and a candidate for regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. It was
a component in 342 hydraulic fracturing products. Some of the other most widely used
chemicals include isopropyl alcohol, which was used in 274 products, and ethylene glycol, which
was used in 119 products. Crystalline silica (silicon dioxide) appeared in 207 products, generally
proppants used to hold open fractures. Table 1 has a list of the most commonly used compounds in hydraulic fracturing fluids.

Table 1. Chemical Components Appearing Most Often in Hydraulic Fracturing Products Used Between 2005 and 2009:

Hydraulic fracturing companies used 2-butoxyethanol (2-BE) as a foaming agent or
surfactant in 126 products. According to EPA scientists, 2-BE is easily absorbed and rapidly
distributed in humans following inhalation, ingestion, or dermal exposure. Studies have shown
that exposure to 2-BE can cause hemolysis (destruction of red blood cells) and damage to the
spleen, liver, and bone marrow. The hydraulic fracturing companies injected 21.9 million
gallons of products containing 2-BE between 2005 and 2009. They used the highest volume of
products containing 2-BE in Texas, which accounted for more than half of the volume used.
EPA recently found this chemical in drinking water wells tested in Pavillion, Wyoming. Table
2 shows the use of 2-BE by state.

B. Toxic Chemicals
The oil and gas service companies used hydraulic fracturing products containing 29
chemicals that are (1) known or possible human carcinogens, (2) regulated under the Safe
Drinking Water Act for their risks to human health, or (3) listed as hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. These 29 chemicals were components of 652 different products used in hydraulic fracturing. Table 3 lists these toxic chemicals and their frequency of use.

According to EPA, diesel contains benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes. See
EPA, Evaluation of Impacts to Underground Sources of Drinking Water by Hydraulic
Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Reservoirs (June 2004) (EPA 816-R-04-003) at 4-11.

1. Carcinogens
Between 2005 and 2009, the hydraulic fracturing companies used 95 products containing
13 different carcinogens. These included naphthalene (a possible human carcinogen), benzene (a known human carcinogen), and acrylamide (a probable human carcinogen). Overall, these companies injected 10.2 million gallons of fracturing products containing at least one carcinogen. The companies used the highest volume of fluids containing one or more
carcinogens in Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma. Table 4 shows the use of these chemicals by
state.

2. Safe Drinking Water Act Chemicals
Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA regulates 53 chemicals that may have an
adverse effect on human health and are known to or likely to occur in public drinking water
systems at levels of public health concern. Between 2005 and 2009, the hydraulic fracturing
companies used 67 products containing at least one of eight SDWA-regulated chemicals.
Overall, they injected 11.7 million gallons of fracturing products containing at least one chemical
regulated under SDWA. Most of these chemicals were injected in Texas. Table 5 shows the use
of these chemicals by state.

For purposes of this report, a chemical is considered a “carcinogen” if it is on one of
two lists: (1) substances identified by the National Toxicology Program as “known to be human
carcinogens” or as “reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens”; and (2) substances
identified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health
Organization, as “carcinogenic” or “probably carcinogenic” to humans. See U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Toxicology Program, Report on
Carcinogens, Eleventh Edition (Jan. 31, 2005) and World Health Organization, International
Agency for Research on Cancer, Agents Classified by the IARC Monographs (online athttp://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/index.php) (accessed Feb. 28, 2011).

The vast majority of these SDWA-regulated chemicals were the BTEX compounds –
benzene, toluene, xylene, and ethylbenzene. The BTEX compounds appeared in 60 hydraulic
fracturing products used between 2005 and 2009 and were used in 11.4 million gallons of
hydraulic fracturing fluids. The Department of Health and Human Services, the International
Agency for Research on Cancer, and EPA have determined that benzene is a human
carcinogen. Chronic exposure to toluene, ethylbenzene, or xylenes also can damage the central nervous system, liver, and kidneys.

In addition, the hydraulic fracturing companies injected more than 30 million gallons of
diesel fuel or hydraulic fracturing fluids containing diesel fuel in wells in 19 states. In a 2004
report, EPA stated that the “use of diesel fuel in fracturing fluids poses the greatest threat” to
underground sources of drinking water. Diesel fuel contains toxic constituents, including
BTEX compounds. EPA also has created a Candidate Contaminant List (CCL), which is a list of
contaminants that are currently not subject to national primary drinking water regulations but are
known or anticipated to occur in public water systems and may require regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act in the future. Nine chemicals on that list—1-butanol, acetaldehyde, benzyl

3. Hazardous Air Pollutants
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to control the emission of 187 hazardous air pollutants,
which are pollutants that cause or may cause cancer or other serious health effects, such as
reproductive effects or birth defects, or adverse environmental and ecological effects. Between
2005 and 2009, the hydraulic fracturing companies used 595 products containing 24 different
hazardous air pollutants.

Hydrogen fluoride is a hazardous air pollutant that is a highly corrosive and systemic
poison that causes severe and sometimes delayed health effects due to deep tissue penetration. Absorption of substantial amounts of hydrogen fluoride by any route may be fatal. One of the hydraulic fracturing companies used 67,222 gallons of two products containing hydrogen fluoride in 2008 and 2009.

Lead is a hazardous air pollutant that is a heavy metal that is particularly harmful to
children’s neurological development. It also can cause health problems in adults, including
reproductive problems, high blood pressure, and nerve disorders. One of the hydraulic
fracturing companies used 780 gallons of a product containing lead in this five-year period.

Methanol is the hazardous air pollutant that appeared most often in hydraulic fracturing
products. Other hazardous air pollutants used in hydraulic fracturing fluids included
formaldehyde, hydrogen chloride, and ethylene glycol.

V. USE OF PROPRIETARY AND “TRADE SECRET” CHEMICALS

Many chemical components of hydraulic fracturing fluids used by the companies were
listed on the MSDSs as “proprietary” or “trade secret.” The hydraulic fracturing companies used
93.6 million gallons of 279 products containing at least one proprietary component between 2005 and 2009.

This is likely a conservative estimate. We included only those products for which the
MSDS says “proprietary” or “trade secret” instead of listing a component by name or providing
the CAS number. If the MSDS listed a component’s CAS as N.A. or left it blank, we did not
count that as a trade secret claim, unless the company specified as such in follow-up
correspondence.]

The Committee requested that these companies disclose this proprietary information.
Although a few companies were able to provide additional information to the Committee about
some of the fracturing products, in most cases the companies stated that they did not have access to proprietary information about products they purchased “off the shelf” from chemical
suppliers. The proprietary information belongs to the suppliers, not the users of the chemicals.

Universal Well Services, for example, told the Committee that it “obtains hydraulic
fracturing products from third-party manufacturers, and to the extent not publicly disclosed,
product composition is proprietary to the respective vendor and not to the Company.
Complete Production Services noted that the company always uses fluids from third-party
suppliers who provide an MSDS for each product. Complete confirmed that it is “not aware of
any circumstances in which the vendors who provided the products have disclosed this
proprietary information” to the company, further noting that “such information is highly
proprietary for these vendors, and would not generally be disclosed to service providers” like
Complete. Key Energy Services similarly stated that it “generally does not have access to the
trade secret information as a purchaser of the chemical(s). Trican also told the Committee that
it has limited knowledge of “off the shelf” products purchased from a chemical distributor or
manufacturer, noting that “Trican does not have any information in its possession about the
components of such products beyond what the distributor of each product provided Trican in the
MSDS sheet.

In these cases, it appears that the companies are injecting fluids containing unknown
chemicals about which they may have limited understanding of the potential risks posed to
human health and the environment.

VI. CONCLUSION

Hydraulic fracturing has opened access to vast domestic reserves of natural gas that could
provide an important stepping stone to a clean energy future. Yet questions about the safety of
hydraulic fracturing persist, which are compounded by the secrecy surrounding the chemicals
used in hydraulic fracturing fluids. This analysis is the most comprehensive national assessment
to date of the types and volumes of chemical used in the hydraulic fracturing process. It shows
that between 2005 and 2009, the 14 leading hydraulic fracturing companies in the United States
used over 2,500 hydraulic fracturing products containing 750 compounds. More than 650 of
these products contained chemicals that are known or possible human carcinogens, regulated
under the Safe Drinking Water Act, or listed as hazardous air pollutants.

To compile this list of chemicals, Committee staff reviewed each Material Safety Data
Sheet provided to the Committee for hydraulic fracturing products used between 2005 and 2009. Committee staff transcribed the names and CAS numbers as written in the MSDSs; as such, any inaccuracies on this list reflect inaccuracies on the MSDSs themselves.

* Components marked with an asterisk appeared on at least one MSDS without an identifying
CAS number. The MSDSs in these cases marked the CAS as proprietary, noted that the CAS was not available, or left the CAS field blank. Components marked with an asterisk may be
duplicative of other components on this list, but Committee staff have no way of identifying such
duplicates without the identifying CAS number.

Source: Report –

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
MINORITY STAFF
APRIL 2011

An original investigative report by Earth Focus and UK’s Ecologist Film Unit looks at the risks of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale. From toxic chemicals in drinking water to unregulated interstate dumping of potentially radioactive waste that experts fear can contaminate water supplies in major population centers including New York City, are the health consequences worth the economic gains?

Marcellus Shale contains enough natural gas to supply all US gas needs for 14 years. But as gas drilling takes place, using a process called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” toxic chemicals and methane gas seep into drinking water. Now experts fear that unacceptable levels of radioactive Radium 226 (and deadly Radon too) in gas development waste.

Fracking chemicals are linked to bone, liver and breast cancers, gastrointestinal, circulatory, respiratory, developmental as well as brain and nervous system disorders. Such chemicals are present in frack waste and may find their way into drinking water and air.

Waste from Pennsylvania gas wells — waste that may also contain unacceptable levels of radium — is routinely dumped across state lines into landfills in New York, Ohio and West Virginia. New York does not require testing waste for radioactivity prior to dumping or treatment. So drill cuttings from Pennsylvania have been dumped in New York’s Chemung and other counties and liquid waste is shipped to treatment plants in Auburn and Watertown New York. How radioactive is this waste? Experts are calling are for testing to find out.

New York State may have been the first state in the nation to put a temporary hold on fracking pending a safety review, but it allows other states to dump toxic frack waste within its boundaries.

With a gas production boom underway in the Marcellus Shale and plans for some 400,000 wells in the coming decades, the cumulative impact of dumping potential lethal waste without adequate oversight is a catastrophe waiting to happen. And now U.S. companies are exporting fracking to Europe.